iPhone BitmapImageRep - iphone

Question

I have a buffer which has JPEG image data. I need to display this image in UIImageView. I need to convert this image buffer into an object of UIImage and use it as follows
NSData *data = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:appFile];
UIImage *theImage = [[UIImage alloc] initWithData:data];
I get the image displayed but with a low resolution as compared to the actual resolution. Do I need to convert it into a Bitmap first and then use it with UIImage? I don't seem to be able to use NSBitmapImageRep. Any ideas on how can this be achieved?

Answer 1

If the UIImageView frame dimensions are different than the source image dimensions, you'll get a resized version of the image. The quality can be pretty rough depending on how much of a conversion is being performed.
I found this code on the net somewhere (sorry original author - I've lost the attribution) that performs a smoother resize:
UIImage* resizedImage(UIImage *inImage, CGRect thumbRect)
{
CGImageRef imageRef = [inImage CGImage];
CGImageAlphaInfo alphaInfo = CGImageGetAlphaInfo(imageRef);
// There's a wierdness with kCGImageAlphaNone and CGBitmapContextCreate
// see Supported Pixel Formats in the Quartz 2D Programming Guide
// Creating a Bitmap Graphics Context section
// only RGB 8 bit images with alpha of kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipFirst, kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipLast, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedFirst,
// and kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast, with a few other oddball image kinds are supported
// The images on input here are likely to be png or jpeg files
if (alphaInfo == kCGImageAlphaNone)
alphaInfo = kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipLast;
// Build a bitmap context that's the size of the thumbRect
CGContextRef bitmap = CGBitmapContextCreate(
NULL,
thumbRect.size.width, // width
thumbRect.size.height, // height
CGImageGetBitsPerComponent(imageRef), // really needs to always be 8
4 * thumbRect.size.width, // rowbytes
CGImageGetColorSpace(imageRef),
alphaInfo
);
// Draw into the context, this scales the image
CGContextDrawImage(bitmap, thumbRect, imageRef);
// Get an image from the context and a UIImage
CGImageRef ref = CGBitmapContextCreateImage(bitmap);
UIImage* result = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:ref];
CGContextRelease(bitmap); // ok if NULL
CGImageRelease(ref);
return result;
}